


Cleanup Effects

by PCrabapple



Series: Touch for Gordon? [2]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self-Aware
Genre: Anxiety, Beards (Facial Hair), Blood (only a little), Erections, Facial Shaving, Fear, Fluff, Grooming (Like Facial Hair Grooming), Imagined Violence, Knifeplay, M/M, Minor Injuries, Praise Kink, Sexual Tension, Shaving, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:01:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PCrabapple/pseuds/PCrabapple
Summary: Gordon hasn't been able to shave throughout the entire Black Mesa ordeal. His facial hair is getting out of hand. Someone should really do something about that.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Series: Touch for Gordon? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922557
Comments: 9
Kudos: 234





	Cleanup Effects

**Author's Note:**

> Try to find a mirror in Black Mesa. I fucking dare you.
> 
> This one earns its Mature rating. Don't send this to minors. And if you are a minor, turn back.

“Oh damn. Do I really look like that?”

“It’s… uh… it’s basically a mirror, Mr. Freeman. So… yes?” Tommy says, his reflection visible in the darkened window behind Gordon. He looks like he’s actually concerned Gordon might not know what reflections are.

“I know, it’s just… I haven’t thought about shaving in so long. I didn’t realize...” Gordon rubs his hand over his fuzzy cheeks, squinting at the dull image in the glass. His beard is extremely unkempt, and longer than it’s ever been, not to mention the messy hair sprouting from his jaw and neck, which he usually keeps clean shaven.

Mirrors have been near-impossible to come by in Black Mesa, so he hadn’t noticed how scruffy he’s gotten. It's not until they chanced upon a particularly reflective surface while taking a breather in the Lambda Complex lobby that Gordon recalls shaving is something he used to do.

“Ugh, I hate it,” Gordon says, scratching at the hair on his throat, suddenly itchy now that he knows it’s there.

“We all hate it, Gordon,” Bubby says.

“What do you mean? You guys look exactly the same as when I met you,” Gordon replies, “You clearly don’t have to worry about this sort of thing.” This is another subtle indicator that he’s the only halfway normal human in their little troupe.

“I mean we all hate _your_ beard. It’s looks fucking awful.”

Gordon rolls his eyes. “I’m sorry it offends you. I don’t exactly have a quality razor. Or a mirror I’d be confident enough to shave in. Or, oh yeah, A FUCKING HAND TO DO IT WITH!” He lifts his gun-arm and waves it in Bubby’s face.

“Yes, yes, we’ve heard about your hand problem. Get someone else to do it. That solves the mirror issue as well,” Bubby says. “As for the razor...” He pulls out a combat knife, the kind the United States Military all seem to be equipped with. “This seems quite sharp.”

Gordon’s eyes widen at the sight. “Oh, no. Hell fucking no. Absolutely not. You are not getting anywhere near me with that thing.”

“Of course not, _I’m_ not touching your disgusting neckbeard,” Bubby sneers.

“I could do it,” Benrey mutters. He’s looking at himself in the window, running a hand over his own neck, possibly comparing the disparity in hairiness between him and Gordon.

“Wh- No, Abso- _fucking-lutely not_.” Gordon sputters. “I mean. Aside from the fact that I don’t trust you with a...a feather. Do you even know _how_ to shave?”

“Sure, gimme that, please,” Benrey holds out his hand to Bubby. Bubby passes the knife over, ignoring the fervent shaking of Gordon’s head. Benrey turns back to look at himself in the window and in a rather alarming move, puts the blade of the knife against his throat.

Despite his oft-professed hatred for Benrey, especially after the whole Hand Thing, Gordon still wants to shout out, to stop him. But he can’t do more than reach out his hand a few inches before Benrey moves. He deftly drags the tilted blade down the length of his neck, smoothly skimming the blade over his skin. Both Benrey and the knife come away clean, no blood. “Like that, right? Too easy.” Benrey shrugs, looking back at Gordon, challenging him to come up with another excuse.

There are plenty, but Gordon can't think beyond his gut reaction. “I...no, I mean. No, not _you_." Gordon insists. He looks at Tommy, who shakes his head.

“He did a lot better than I could. And anyway...you’re always really uh...really nervous when I’ve got weapons around you. You seem more comfortable with...with Benrey.”

“I...how does everyone know about that?” Gordon grumbles. He’d hoped Bubby hadn’t cared enough to tell anyone when he’d walked in on Gordon and Benrey...not _cuddling_ per se. Just...sitting very close to one another...engaging in some perfectly platonic contact.

“Know about what, Gordon?” Dr. Coomer asks. “And before you attempt to recruit me trim your whiskers, I’m afraid these old hands of mine are more suited to brute force than delicate handiwork!”

Gordon glances back at Benrey. He's running his thumb gently over the blade, testing it. "Oops," Benrey says softly as a hairline laceration appears in his skin, blood welling up slowly. The knife does seem to be very sharp.

Benrey catches Gordon staring. “No…” Gordon says, to nothing, and looks away. Back to the reflective window, to the image of his bedraggled face. God, it would be nice to have it shaved, to feel like a human again. To feel like himself. Now that he's seen it he can't stop thinking about the discomfort and prickliness, how shabby he looks.

And also… allowing Benrey to shave him means Benrey will be touching him again. It’s not something he’s asked for since the one time, and certainly not since Benrey had a big part in getting his hand cut off. Benrey swears that wasn’t supposed to happen, and so does everyone else. But while Gordon granted amnesty to Tommy, Coomer, and to a slightly lesser extent Bubby, he’s been holding out on forgiving Benrey.

Part of this is self-sabotage. He’d hoped he could get by with that one strange session of touching and being touched by Benrey. But if anything it just made him want it all the more, and now he’s seriously considering letting the guy shave his face just so he has an excuse for more skin contact. Even though the degree to which he enjoys the feel of the other man is frankly terrifying. Benrey is the only one who will do this for him. Benrey is the only one who can touch more than his face, the only one Gordon can actually feel.

Gordon closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Okay, fine. We’ve gotta wait around for the Lambda team to come up and let us into the core anyway. Let’s go.”

All the major complexes have their own locker rooms, somewhere employees can change and wash up after a hard day’s work with questionable materials. The Lamda building is no different, though it’s smaller than the ones in the more public parts of Black Mesa. The off-white tile and echo of their steps are familiar in a way that puts Gordon at ease, though not much. He’s kicked a doorstop under the door, wanting to make sure The Science Team hears him yell if Benrey decides to slit his throat. If he even has time to yell.

“Found some of this uh...white stuff,” Benrey says. Gordon looks up from the bench he’s claimed to see Benrey holding a can of shaving cream.

“Oh, good,” Gordon says, uncertain. It is good. It would be way worse without it. But with each piece of the shaving puzzle collected, the actual act gets closer and closer. Gordon is starting to get very nervous, breathing shallow. He can’t believe he’s going to let Benrey of all people do this. But he’s got a towel, a cup of water, a bench for them to sit on. It’s all here. He can’t stall much longer.

He can stall a little longer, though.

"Let me see the knife," Gordon says. Benrey straddles the bench next to Gordon and holds it out, blade pointing towards him. Gordon sighs and gingerly takes it. It's matte black, blade and handle both. Gordon would have thought they'd want it more reflective, so they could do that signaling trick by bouncing sunlight off the surface. Shows what he knows about the troops.

The rubberized handle gives way to the straight blade, no serrated sections or anything. It was dark when it happened, but the absence of any...sawing function tells Gordon this is not the same kind of knife the fuckers used to cut off his hand. That’s something, he supposes.

He holds it up to the harsh light of the bathroom, turning it this way and that, checking the edge for any divots or gouges that could fuck up his skin. Whoever Bubby had pulled it off of kept it in great shape, either through lack of use or abundance of care.

"Give me your arm," Gordon says, placing the knife on the bench between them and taking hold of Benrey. There's an unexpected warmth when he wraps his hand around Benrey’s wrist, and Gordon realizes he's noclipping through the suit again. Or maybe he never turned it off.

Gordon tries not to let the gooseflesh prickling up on his own arm distract him as he pushes up Benrey’s sleeve, finding what he's looking for. He picks up the knife again.

“Whoa, bro. Gonna chop me up after all we’ve been through?” Benrey says, but he doesn’t pull his arm away. Gordon has to remind himself that this show of trust doesn’t really count since Benrey doesn’t seem to die.

"Sometimes I think I should…” Gordon grumbles. “I’m just testing if it’s good for shaving. Put some shaving cream here," he points to the coarse layer of dark hair on Benrey’s forearm. He _could_ just point. But he can’t help himself, and instead drags his fingers over the rough texture, finding himself once again hungry for any sort of contact. Benrey does it, coating his arm in way too much of the fluffy foam. “Hold still,” Gordon says, wiping some of it off to find the surface of Benrey’s skin. He can’t feel the shaving cream with his gloved fingers, it's not part of Benrey. This is tough with only one hand, and his left at that, but Gordon leans close and concentrates.

He lays the blade along Benrey’s arm and slowly drags it towards himself, hoping Benrey is taking note of how careful he’s being. The pull of the knife peels away the shaving cream, leaving a strip of clean, pale skin. Gordon shifts the knife and runs his thumb over Benrey’s arm. It’s smooth and soft, Gordon could sit here rubbing it all day. But the main point has been proven. The knife is good and sharp.

"Will it grow back?" Gordon asks, suddenly realizing he might have fucked something up permanently. Maybe Benrey’s hair is important, like a cat’s whiskers. Well, it hardly equals losing a hand, and he's seen Benrey undergo much worse. Gordon shifts his eyes up to look at Benrey's face. His thumb loiters longer than necessary, moving between the hairy and silky bits just for the fun of feeling things. Benrey tears his own gaze from Gordon’s hand. Eye contact is somehow more unnerving than touching, and Gordon looks elsewhere.

"Uh...Dunno, guess we gotta wait and see," Benrey says. He moves his other hand to join Gordon’s in probing the newly-hairless flesh. Their fingers bump against one another. "Your turn now? Please give knife?" He twists his arm in Gordon’s grasp, palm up. Gordon has to let go.

He also has to hand over the very sharp object, which Benrey will then put on his face and neck. He stalls just a bit more, running his thumb over severed hair stuck to the blade. He doesn't feel it. Apparently, Benrey no longer owns it.

This brings up a whole host of interesting questions, and Gordon begins mentally designing experiments to answer them. What if Benrey gets a limb severed? What if it's severed while it's touching Gordon through the suit? Does saliva pass through? If it doesn't, would Benrey’s tongue be completely dry if he licked-

"Knife give? Please again?" Benrey insists, and Gordon is blessedly wrenched from his wayward musings. He gives over the knife, handle towards Benrey.

"This is how you give someone a knife, by the way," Gordon says, wondering how soon he's going to regret this.

“Got it,” Benrey says with a nonchalance that makes Gordon suspect he’s not retaining that helpful bit of social information. He takes the knife and wipes the remaining hair and shaving cream off on the towel.

Gordon makes to use the shaving cream can, and realizes if he uses his left hand to press the button, he has no other hand to spray it onto. Fuck, he hates this. He sprays some directly onto his face while Benrey scoots closer. He rubs it over his cheeks, jaw, and neck as Benrey maneuvers into an awkward-looking position. One leg is behind Gordon, the other stretched out underneath Gordon’s knees. Gordon tries not to think about how he could move back a little bit and be sitting on Benrey’s thigh, leeching the heat from him into his sensation-greedy body.

“Ready for your very professional haircut, sir?” Benrey asks, holding up the knife. Gordon is not, but he nods.

“Just...start with the cheeks first. And…” He moves his right arm to point the barrel of the minigun at Benrey. “Don’t fucking cut me. I swear I will shoot you.” He might accidentally shoot him even if Benrey doesn’t cut him, out of pure nerves.

"Uh huh," Benrey says, and leans in close. The blade is cold on his cheek, and Gordon tries not to tremble as Benrey strokes downwards, dragging it along his skin. Benrey pulls the knife away and dips it into the cup of water, wipes it on the towel, and goes back in for another pass.

Gordon tries to stay still. But every time the knife comes back to his face he flinches. Benrey is surprisingly patient, waiting for Gordon to still each time before getting to work. He’s going slow. Too slow, in Gordon’s conflicted opinion. He’s spending a lot of time with his face very close to Gordon’s.

When Benrey reaches the junction of Gordon’s jaw and neck, Gordon can’t help but shift nervously. He can’t stop himself from imagining Benrey turning the knife just so. The tip of the knife sliding into the soft flesh below his ear. His blood spilling out as Benrey drags it swiftly under his chin to the other side...

“Stop fuckin’ squirming. You’re gonna get yourself sliced open, idiot.” Benrey grabs Gordon’s chin, firm and tight. Gordon does stop moving. Stops talking. Stops breathing. Stops thinking. Some force or instinct keeps him frozen as Benrey tilts his face up, allowing better access to his throat.

He shouldn’t just sit here. Every natural urge should have him running, getting as far as possible from Benrey and that fucking knife. There is a steady alarm, a frantically blinking red light on the console in his brain, telling him that he is in very real danger.

Didn’t they recently add “freeze” to “fight-or-flight”? Maybe that’s what’s going on now, why he can’t move his stupid body when this chaotic asshole has a knife so close to his carotid artery. But that’s not it, and Gordon knows it.

What it is, is Benrey’s fingers on his jaw sparking a powerful sense memory. His mind flies back to that time in the breakroom, Benrey giving him the skin-to-skin contact he’d craved. He still craves it, in fact. Touching Benrey was one thing, but Benrey touching him is another entirely. His face is accessible to anyone, not covered by the HEV suit, but he doesn't have people caressing his jaw on a regular basis. It's disarming and Gordon doesn’t want it to stop. It's enough to ignore the fear coursing through him, turning his veins to ice as Benrey brings the blade to his skin.

Gordon holds his breath, squeezes his eyes shut and tries to focus on the warmth from Benrey’s fingers, not how one wrong move from either of them could very well kill him.

The metal of the knife is warm by now, and it slides over his flesh easily. He can still feel every momentary snag of the edge against his coarse neck hairs. Then the blade does its job, shearing the strands flush with his skin, and moving on to the next. Over and over and over.

“Not so bad, huh?” Benrey says after the first stroke over his neck. He pulls away and wipes the knife on the towel, which is starting to look pretty gross with all the hair accumulating on it. “Once you stop crying like a little baby.”

“Actually,” Gordon hisses out while Benrey is otherwise occupied, “It is kind of bad, having a fucked up alien assho-” Before he can spout any more vitriol, Benrey is leaning back in, pressing the knife against his neck, and Gordon can’t say a damn thing. He’s not afraid that Benrey is vindictive enough to cut him just for insulting him, though it’s a possibility. It’s more the worry that any movement of his own could cause a fatal slip.

Of course, the thought of that alone makes him aware that he shouldn’t move a muscle, shouldn’t even swallow. And now he’s thinking about how much he would really like to swallow.

“You’re so tense,” Benrey says, like it’s a surprise, like it’s weird that Gordon is nervous about Benrey wielding a sharp object near his very important blood vessels. “You should try relaxing some time maybe. Freaked out little scaredy man. Gonna have some kinda stress episode.”

Once again Benrey leans back to clean off the knife, and Gordon opens his mouth. He’s going to say that he’s in the middle of a fucking _alien invasion_ , and he has the right to be a little stressed. He doesn’t get a single word out before Benrey sets the edge of the knife to the underside of his chin and begins another slow, careful trek down his neck.

Gordon grits his teeth, grips the edge of the bench with his left hand, tries not to clench with his right and fire the gun. Fucker is doing this on purpose, isn’t he? And Gordon can’t do a damn thing about it. He’s being held hostage, forced to listen to Benrey spewing his bullshit while he holds his life in his hands.

“So smooth. These handsome cheeks are gonna be all uh… aerialdynamic,” Benrey says softly as he tilts Gordon’s head to the side to get at a different area. His thumb rubs over Gordon's cheekbone. Gordon represses a shiver. “Gonna cut right through the air. Make you faster.”

Gordon doesn’t even know what the hell he would say to that if he could speak. He doesn’t make an attempt during Benrey’s next break, instead swallowing and clearing his throat while he has the chance. His face is heating up with the weird sort-of praise, he hopes Benrey doesn’t notice.

“You’re gonna look so fresh after this,” Benrey continues. “Babyface Freeman um... ready to shoot all the bad guys. Gonna get ‘em all worked up with your… your chiseled jawline before you blast ‘em.”

Gordon shifts, trying to move his legs without moving his head. Benrey is so stupid. The things he’s saying are so stupid. Gordon is stupid for sitting here listening to him. But the way Benrey is talking to him is lighting up a very specific part of his brain, in much similar a manner as him touching Gordon so gently does. He wishes he could speak, could tell him to shut the fuck up, push him back. But he can’t. All he can do is sit stock still and take it.

“I gotta get the front part. Here, move over,” Benrey says, holding the knife away while his other hand pulls at Gordon’s side. His hand slips through the HEV suit to curve around his hipbone. Gordon is too caught off guard and unmoored to do much more than comply, finding himself basically straddling Benrey now, facing him directly.

The heat of their contact is much greater now, and Gordon is becoming a bit overwhelmed. He pictures what he can feel but can't see, his legs, bare and hairy through the phased HEV suit, draped over Benrey’s thighs. He’s again glad Benrey’s clothes are still solid. He manages to keep a few inches between their crotches, but those inches are saturated with the elevated temperature of their bodies.

“Up,” Benrey says, tilting his own chin up in demonstration. Gordon shudders with something that’s not quite fear. He hesitates, then does it, lifting his head to bare his throat completely to Benrey. Benrey’s hand wraps around his jaw again to hold him steady as he brings the knife to the center of Gordon’s throat, pulling the blade over his Adam’s apple with a painfully cautious drag.

“You’re bein’ so quiet and still. So well-behaved while I uh… chop your nasty neckbeard hairs. Hmn. Gordo GoodBoy Mode,” Benrey says. He takes a bit longer to clean the knife this time. Maybe he’s giving Gordon a chance to say something. But Gordon’s thoughts are too jumbled and flustered to think of anything coherent.

He’s glad he’s stuck looking up at the fluorescent lights above him. Glad he has an excuse to not make eye contact with Benrey while he’s saying this stuff. He knows he’s going red and hopes he can pass it off as his skin being irritated by the knife.

When Benrey closes in this time he has nothing to say, and Gordon would be glad for it. Except that now it’s eerily quiet. There’s no sound but the scrape of the knife over his throat, the sigh of their breaths slipping past each other. He can sense the hot air coming from Benrey’s mouth and nose, ghosting over his newly-tender skin, more and more exposed to it with each drag of the blade.

The way Benrey is holding his face now, his entire hand cupping his chin as he works on the lower areas of Gordon’s neck, is far better than something so simple has any right to be. A strange, un-nameable energy seems to flow into Gordon from Benrey's palm. His fingers curl around his jaw, his thumb rests just below the swell of Gordon's bottom lip. He can barely feel Benrey’s pulse telegraphing through his skin.

The warmth, the quiet, the breath, the intimacy, and careful attention... it’s all compounding into something that simply shouldn’t happen. Especially with the sharp blade at his jugular. It really, really shouldn’t make Gordon feel this way. Yet he does feel this way, a slow, steady drip of arousal from the back of his brain, sliding down his backbone, pooling at the base of his spine. It’s so gradual at first that he doesn’t even realize what’s happening until the restrictive nature of the HEV suit makes it clear.

He almost wants to let himself just enjoy it, let it build, see what happens. But...

The next time Benrey sits up Gordon rips his mind out of its comfortable, warm nest. “Okay. We’re done.” He says abruptly, backing away, sliding along the bench in an effort to get some distance between them. His brain, pleasantly blank until now, is full of buzzing panic, embarrassment, intrusive ideas. More experimental designs present themselves. How does his body, the HEV suit and Benrey’s noclip work when Gordon is in this very particular state?

“How the heck would you know?” Benrey asks, frowning. “I’m not done, you still got, some...uh, some gross patches.

“It’s fine. I...I’m sure you did a good job. Thanks. Uh. Really. I appreciate it.” Gordon stands up and moves to the sink to splash his face with water that isn’t nearly cold enough. It stings, and while he wishes he had moisturizer, he’ll take the pain, hoping it will distract him from other areas and other sensations.

“I could do better if you sit your jumpy ass down for a few more minutes,” Benrey says, and Gordon turns around to find him approaching him with the knife still in hand. The sight sends a chill down his spine. Not with fear of cutting or death this time, but with anxiety about what will happen if he lets Benrey keep going, keep touching him, breathing on him, talking to him.

“Yeah well. We really should get going. I’m sure Bubby is pissed off. And...we’re so close to the Lambda Core. Don’t wanna waste any more time, right?”

Benrey’s expression darkens. “Or we could like, uh… not go to the Lamda Core. Kinda sounds like a shit place to be, y’know?” He looks off, attempts to do some sort of fancy knife twirling move and fumbles. The blade falls to the tile floor with a punctuating clang.

“That’s...we’ve been trying to get there this whole fucking time, Benrey.” Gordon shakes his head, “And you probably fucked up the blade by dropping it just now. So it’s useless.” He picks up the knife and tosses it in the nearby trash can. Because there’s no way they’re doing that again. Not when it stirs so many conflicting and frightening emotions and...physical responses.

“What the hell? Waste of a cool knife,” Benrey pouts. He grabs the towel and drops it in the trash as well, apparently giving the endeavor up as a lost cause. Gordon finds himself a confusing mixture of relieved and disappointed.

“Let’s get moving, maybe you can find another one,” Gordon says. Like he didn’t just make a private vow that he would never let Benrey near him with a sharp blade again.

Gordon rubs his hand over his face as he turns and leaves the bathroom. His fingers can’t feel Benrey’s handiwork, of course, but his sensitive cheeks, jaw, and neck can certainly feel the rough material of the gloves. He hisses a bit with the burn, again wishes he had some sort of lotion, again tells himself it’s for the best. Discomfort is better than staying hard for some insane alien just because he touched his face, said some sort of nice things, and didn’t kill him.

“You fucked it up, Benrey,” Bubby says when they rejoin the group in the lobby. “A real hack-job.”

“Fuck off, bro. I never hack, right Gordon?” Benrey replies, placing a hand on his shoulder. The heat from his noclipping hand burns now. It’s like a trigger, straight to his pleasure centers, threatening to undo all the hard work distancing himself from Benrey had done. Gordon shrugs it off and takes a few steps away. “Not my fault Freeman’s being a fucking weird baby about it. Didn’t let me finish.”

“I think it looks...looks okay!” Tommy says after examining the results. Gordon really hopes he’s not still flushed. “No cuts or...blood or anything.”

“Well done, Benrey!” Coomer compliments.

“Okay, yeah, great. Did they let us in yet? Can we get going?" Gordon insists. Benrey tsks behind him and Gordon doesn’t look back. He doesn’t bother to look in the window he’d been using as a mirror either. His concern about his appearance has been completely subsumed by other neuroses.

There’s something here, between them. Gordon doesn’t know if it’s anything beyond social grooming and touch-starvation. He’s not even sure Benrey, inhuman that he is, is on the same wavelength. For all he knows the fucker is totally oblivious to how much he’s wrecking Gordon. He does want to figure it out, as much as the fact that it’s Benrey disturbs him. But there’s too much going on right now, no time to get into this emotion and emotion-adjecent shit.

He’ll just have to wait until after the Lambda Core.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the horny hlvrai server for the beta!


End file.
